This invention relates to a drawer type emergency escape adapted to be mounted on buildings, ships, article hoisting and transporting machines employed in factories, harbours, iron works mills, shipbuilding yards and mines, construction machines employed in earth-moving sites, mining machines employed in mines and other large size machines and equipment.
Hitherto, there has been used as an emergency escape system for a multi-story building an escape chute, a rope ladder, an escape rope or the like and this has been installed in a box at the point in a room adjacent to the window or emergency exit thereof. When it is to be employed, it must be taken out of a storage box and thrown down through the window or exit and persons on the ground must secure the lower end of the escape system by any suitable means. Thereafter, the evacuees can escape to the safer ground. Thus, the conventional escape system requires a relatively long time for its preparation for use and, in addition, is not able to give simultaneous and quick refuge to a number of evacuees.
Evacuating by a chute simply suspended from the room where an emergency such as fire occurs has been tried, but it tends to be limited with respect to the height of the building where it can be employed and, therefore, it cannot be installed on a large multi-story building.
There has been used an emergency stairway such as a stationary ladder provided outside of the building. However, when such a stairway is provided, the exit door should be locked in order to prevent an intrusion of thieves, etc. and various articles tend to be placed adjacent to the exit door. Thus, when an emergency occurs, the door cannot be quickly opened, with the result that many casualties have occurred.
Such emergency stairway is known to be a relatively effective installation, except for its imperfect maintenance. However, the scale and installation position are determined relative to the surrounding buildings and the road condition rather than from the standpoint of the safety of the people in the building where it is installed, because it is normally installed in a manner in which it projects from the building wall. In addition, such a stairway for a multi-story building is a large-scale structure and, therefore, lacks a sense of beauty.
In order to avoid such incidents, an emergency escape has been proposed which is adapted to be normally contained in an opening of the building wall so as to constitute a part of the building wall and on emergency to be swung down so as to form a veranda permitting evacuation. However, there are many problems to be solved in connection therewith, such as operation for evacuation, operating performance and durability with respect to natural conditions.
Article hoisting and transporting machines, construction machines and mining machines each generally has the cab disposed in a position substantially above the ground, but the usually equiped with no emergency escape. Of late, large passenger planes each is equiped with an emergency evacuation chute which is adapted to spread and extend upon being filled with an incombustible gas under pressure in a brief time to thereby form an evacuation path through which passengers can evacuate from the plane to the ground. However, this type of evacuation chute has to be extended downwardly until the lower end of the chute reaches the ground and thus, the evacuation chute encounters difficulties in mounting the chute on article hoisting and transporting machines, construction machines and mining machines.